In the wave of accelerating compliance in the global virtual asset market, Hong Kong's position as an Asian Web3 hub is becoming increasingly prominent. In February 2025, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) released the "A-S-P-I-Re" roadmap, proposing to explore virtual asset staking services while emphasizing the provision of regulated on-chain yield channels for investors alongside enhancing blockchain security.
On April 7, 2025, the Hong Kong SFC issued a circular allowing licensed virtual asset trading platforms to apply for staking services. Four days later, Bosera International and HashKey Capital announced that their jointly launched Bosera HashKey Ethereum ETF has been approved by the Hong Kong SFC and will support Ethereum staking functionality starting April 25, 2025. This is the first spot virtual asset ETF in the Asia-Pacific region to support Ethereum staking.
It is reported that HashKey Cloud provides staking services for this ETF through its flagship staking product, ETF Staking Pro. This has sparked market curiosity about how HashKey Cloud was able to implement this compliant staking service case just two months after the policy was released, addressing issues such as "asset custody security" and "yield distribution transparency" in staking services.
Top Ten Globally, Asset Management Scale Nearing $4 Billion
HashKey Cloud is one of the core business segments of HashKey Group, focusing on Web3 infrastructure, with a history dating back to HashQuark in 2018.
Even before the PoS sector exploded, HashKey Cloud was the first to propose the concept of "Staking + Ecosystem Service Provider," integrating project resources, ecosystem cooperation, and market promotion in addition to providing node operation and technical support, helping PoS projects achieve breakthroughs in community building, compliance connection, and capital introduction. It is this "technology + ecosystem" dual-driven model that enabled HashKey Cloud to successfully attract A-round financing led by Qiming Venture Partners in 2020, with follow-on investments from well-known institutions such as Fenbushi Capital, HashKey Capital, and Hash Global, making it one of the few staking service providers favored by traditional VCs.
Subsequently, with HashKey Group's accelerated layout in the global compliant crypto finance landscape, HashKey Cloud has become an important pillar in the group's strategy of "FinTech + RegTech." The latest data shows that HashKey Cloud has provided node services for over 80 mainstream PoS public chains globally, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana, and Sui, encompassing the most promising emerging ecosystems.
In terms of asset management scale, the assets validated by HashKey Cloud's nodes have exceeded 3.8 billion USDT, not only ranking among the top three in Asia but also entering the top ten node service providers globally.
On the technical and security front, HashKey Cloud has built a highly available, multi-redundant, automated infrastructure architecture, ensuring that all validation nodes operate 24/7 without interruption. Its platform features built-in real-time monitoring, anomaly response, key isolation, and multi-factor authentication risk control mechanisms, combined with the trading platform and asset management licenses under HashKey Group, achieving a closed-loop compliance process from trade matching, asset custody to on-chain staking and yield distribution. This end-to-end, integrated service capability allows institutional investors to participate in on-chain consensus safely and efficiently without transferring underlying assets, enjoying stable staking yields. Data shows that HashKey Cloud's asset security score is 98.21%, leading the industry.
Favorable Timing, Location, and People
Among numerous service providers, HashKey Cloud's ability to become the staking service provider for the Ethereum ETF through its flagship product ETF Staking Pro is attributed to the perfect alignment of favorable timing, location, and people.
As a local compliance pioneer in Hong Kong, HashKey Group's HashKey Exchange has long obtained a virtual asset trading platform license issued by the Hong Kong SFC, providing strong support for HashKey Cloud's entry into the ETF staking field.
Secondly, HashKey Cloud has a long-term technical accumulation, having accumulated rich experience in mainnet launches and node operations. Since 2020, HashKey Cloud has supported Ethereum staking, operating approximately 32,000 Ethereum validation nodes, maintaining zero slashing events and zero asset losses, while generating over 11,936 ETH in staking rewards for users. At the same time, ETF Staking Pro features a four-layer penalty prevention mechanism, real-time API and Dashboard monitoring, and a transparent staking process that supports on-chain validation, almost meeting all the requirements of fund managers for "ultra-low risk, fully traceable."
More critically, HashKey Cloud is an excellent choice in the current market, having completed the product development and compliance model validation for ETF Staking Pro even before the ETF was officially approved. This allows it to quickly integrate with fund managers' systems after the approval of the Bosera HashKey Ethereum ETF, providing end-to-end staking technical solutions and operational support, ensuring that the ETF has compliant, secure, and transparent on-chain yield capabilities from the outset.
In fact, providing staking services for the Ethereum spot ETF is not a simple product integration. Its significance lies in that it offers traditional investors an entry point to obtain on-chain native yields without transferring assets or increasing credit risk. This yield primarily comes from the dual incentives of the Ethereum consensus layer and execution layer, with the former providing rewards for block production and the latter deriving from transaction fees and maximum extractable value (MEV).
According to HashKey Cloud's disclosed 2024 annual report, the annual yield rate for Ethereum staking reached 3.5%, exceeding the average annual rate of 3.3% for the Ethereum network. Moreover, HashKey Cloud supports reinvesting staking rewards into the fund, achieving compound growth. This yield rate even surpasses many traditional bonds and money market instruments, providing institutional investors with a more attractive "yield" solution.
Additionally, compared to traditional ETFs that enhance yields through lending mechanisms, staking does not involve asset misappropriation or short-selling risks, nor is there a possibility of counterparty default. Previously, Buffett expressed skepticism about gold due to its lack of yield. The "zero transfer" yield structure provided by ETF Staking Pro offers investors a more robust appreciation method, especially suitable for conservative institutional funds represented by insurance, pension, and sovereign wealth funds.
More importantly, the staking process is fully verifiable on-chain, combined with real-time data monitoring tools and regular audit reports, providing unprecedented transparency for regulators and investors. This not only reshapes the understanding of "holding yield" within a compliant framework but also sets a new benchmark for the entire crypto asset ETF market.
On-Chain Yield + Compliance, A New Era of Alternative Asset Allocation
The staking service regulatory guidelines released by the Hong Kong SFC on April 7, 2025, have pushed compliant staking into the "proactive empowerment" phase, providing the industry with a replicable regulatory sandbox model. Under this policy framework, HashKey Cloud leverages the full-stack ecosystem advantages of HashKey Group to provide institutions with integrated solutions from trading to staking, from custody to liquidity management.
For a long time, regulatory uncertainty and technical barriers have been the two major obstacles preventing institutional investors from entering the crypto market. The launch of ETF Staking Pro embeds the Ethereum staking on-chain yield mechanism into the ETF products regulated by the Hong Kong SFC, achieving a compliant design of "zero asset transfer." All ETH is always held and managed by the licensed custodian HashKey Exchange, eliminating the need for assets to migrate between different platforms. Fund managers only need to hold the corresponding ETF shares to participate in staking and enjoy yields in the background, with all staking processes being verifiable and auditable on-chain, truly achieving the triple guarantee of "compliance + transparency + efficiency."
It is also worth noting that HashKey Group's trading platform, HashKey Exchange, has not only obtained regulatory approval in Hong Kong but has also been granted virtual asset service licenses in Singapore, Japan, Bermuda, and Ireland, and has received principle approval as a virtual asset service provider in Dubai. The diversified fiat channels and cross-border licenses enable ETF Staking Pro to not only deeply cultivate the local market but also attract global capital to converge in Hong Kong, becoming a bridgehead for international institutions to enter on-chain yields.
Moreover, ETF Staking Pro provides real-time monitoring, allowing fund managers to audit the generation and distribution of each staking yield at any time. For traditional investors, it is even more important that approximately 4% of the annualized staking yield can directly offset ETF management fees, bringing investors dual returns of "price appreciation + protocol yield." This model not only attracts pension funds and insurance capital seeking stable returns but is also expected to elevate the scale of the crypto ETF market from the current billion-level to trillion-level.
Looking ahead, as more traditional assets go on-chain and compliant staking services mature, "yield + compliance" is becoming a new paradigm for alternative asset allocation. Here, on-chain yields are no longer synonymous with speculation, and the boundaries between digital assets and traditional finance are continuously merging.
Disclaimer:
HashKey Cloud does not provide services or accept users from certain jurisdictions, including but not limited to Afghanistan, Algeria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, mainland China, Central Africa, Congo, Cuba, Gaza Strip, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Egypt, Haiti, Hong Kong (except for professional investors as defined in the Securities and Futures Ordinance), Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe, the United States, American Samoa, Bangladesh, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Please confirm that you are not a user from and/or located in the aforementioned jurisdictions.
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